Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

IN THE EVENT OF WAR 369
Largely as a consequence of the assignment of NDRC projects, many
of them of a classified nature, the annual report of the Bureau for 1941, for
the first time, declared its contents restricted to nonconfidential research. A
year later so much of Bureau work was classified that further publication of
the report became pointless. Equally valid perhaps was the reason offered by
the Department of Commerce, that printing of the reports would cease in order
to effect savings of paper, manpower, and printing funds.'°
The open reports for the years just prior to the war identify the pre-
liminary stages of many of the Bureau's later investigations. The last refer.
ence to Bureau work on heavy water, for example, appeared in the report for
1939, describing the preparation in the cryogenic laboratory of pure deu.
terium (D2), for measurement of its properties at the Bureau and at Columbia
University. The substitution of deuterium oxide (D,O) for part of the
water in standard cells was also noted, the difference of drift between cells
with normal and heavy water providing a check on the constancy of the stand-
ard cell."
-Still unclassified in 1939 was the intensification of work on the par-
aflIn hydrocarbons, in search of an optimum synthetic aviation fuel. (The
next annual report, more wary perhaps, emphasized the antiknock character-
istics of these hydrocarbons in automotive engines.)
The formation of the Interdepartmental Screw Thread Committee, a
joint War, Navy, and Commerce Department board, was reported in 1940, to
missiles (of which Hugh L. Dryden was a section chief directing an investigation of jet
propulsion and certain guided missile research) ; subsurface warfare; fire control; ex-
plosives; chemistry; absorbents and aerosols; chemical engineering; transportation de-
velopment; electrical communication (of which J. H. Dellinger headed the radio propa-
gation section) ; radar; radio coordination; optics; physics; war metallurgy; and miscel-
laneous weapons. The Bureau was also concerned in three of the five OSRD panels
outside the divisions: Applied mathematics, vacuum tube development, and radio propa-
gation. Ibid., pp. 84—97.
Considerable Bureau wartime research was done under NDRC and OSRD auspices,
and as a consequence the reports and correspondence relating to that research are to
be found principally in the OSRD records now stored in the National Archives. See
General Records of OSRD, Transfer of Funds—NBS, in NARG 227, and Master Subject
Index, Summary Technical Reports of NDRC. Wartime research for NACA and for
the Navy and War Departments was reported directly to these agencies, the reports and
records maintained in their files. -
A typescript of the annual report for 1943, containing open material only, and with the
Commerce note on suspension of publication, is available in NBS Box 482, PRA. An
MS annual report for 1944 is in NBS Box 494, PRA. None has been found for 1945
except that portion prepared by the division of weights and measures, in NBS Box 506,
PRA.
NBS Annual Report 1939, pp. 51, 53.